LET GOD BE GOD

“Did you not pour me out like milk  and curdle me like cheese,  clothe me with skin and flesh  and knit me together with bones and sinews?” (10:10-11)

Are these the words of a doubting and rebellious man? Definitely not. On the contrary, how tenderly Job talks of the way he has been formed by the hand of his God! That he should speak this way even as his body is covered with open sores, in the midst of his torment paying such gracious homage to the intricate and loving handiwork of his Creator—surely this is an eloquent testimony to his faith. In tone and imagery, and for sheer beauty and intimacy of expression, these verses cannot help but remind us of Psalm 139:

You created my inmost being;  you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am  fearfully and wonderfully made! . . . My frame was not hidden from you  when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,  your eyes saw my unformed body. (vv. 13-16)

Reading these lines of David and of Job, we can almost picture these men tracing with wonder the imprint of the Lord’s fingers still fresh upon their bodies, and feeling even now the soft pressure of the heel of His hand still molding and shaping them. Particularly striking is Job’s comparison of the formation of the body in the womb to the curdling of cheese. Such a homely image this is, and yet there is something wonderful about it too, something that perfectly captures the mysterious texture and consistency of human tissue— at once so solid and so giving, so soft and yet as glossy as polished marble, and with its strange blending of the opaque and the translucent, the earthy and the numinous. In many ways there is nothing more ordinary than the human body, much like a hunk of cheese. What makes the body extraordinary is that it is so obviously something made—and more than that, something made by hand. A fine piece of lace might carry a label reading “Handmade In Italy,” but on our bodies we bear a label far more exotic: “Handmade by the Lord.” Just think what a piece of furniture from the hand of Jesus the carpenter might sell for today! But are we ourselves not infinitely more precious and exquisite?

What Job reveals in these verses is how profoundly aware he is of his own creatureliness. He is not his own; he belongs to Another. Therefore he can say to this Other, “Your hands shaped me and made me. Will you now turn and destroy me?” (10:8). In such words there is challenge and pluck, there is life and vigor—and this in spite of the fact of Job’s physical and emotional trauma, his frailty and his exhaustion. Is this a man speaking up on his own behalf? No, it is not himself Job is defending with such robust and vibrant poetry; rather, he is defending the private property of Another. If Job has a creature’s humility, he also has a creature’s pride. Even while he says, “I despise my own life” (9:21; 10:1), his faith compels him to maintain an underlying admiration for himself as a masterpiece of divine creation. Is this, one wonders, why Job’s despair never takes the form of a suicide wish? True, back in Chapter 3 he wished he had never been born; but once alive the thought of destroying himself seems, surprisingly, never to have occurred to him (or if it did he never spoke it aloud). That is how acutely conscious this man is of belonging wholly to Someone Else.

It is precisely because Job has such a realistic sense of his proper place in the scheme of things that he can depend so heavily on the One who put him there in the first place. When people subtly and insidiously usurp the place of God by taking upon themselves responsibilities that rightly belong to Him alone, the result is legalistic and idolatrous religion. But the sign of true faith is people simply letting themselves be people, and letting God be God. Over and over in Scripture the Lord promises, “You will be My people, and I will be your God.” Job is bold enough to take God up on this deal. It is just as though he were to say, “God, I’m doing my part—why aren’t You doing Yours? I’m being the person—why aren’t You being the God?” One mistake Job never makes is to play God. He plays the man part, and he fully expects God to play the God part. In short, he adheres perfectly to the terms of the Lord’s own covenant.